Loss data, would like to get it back...

[avx]

My brother reformatte my uncles computer without permission, without reason, and without my supervision...It was a complete reformat, he said he was trying to get the speakers to work so he found a disk labled "boot" put it in, and he saw something that he says said "audio boot", and then he just Yes'd everything thing and didnt read, and has completly reformatted my uncles computer...What software can I use to *possibly* retrieve some of the data lost?

And why did it say "audio boot"?

the system in question is mentioned here
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=60529

[Force Flow]

First, I would slave the drive inside another comp to avoid any more writes to the drive. Then I would take a look at some of these progs: http://www.e-evidence.info/other.html

[avx]

What do you mean by "any more writes to the drive" force?

Im not with them right now, they are back at my uncles, I beieve they have already reinstalled the OS, and are currently trying to re-establish a DSL connection...for some reason that are having trouble with that. Neither of them are great with PC's, my brother is "ok" but like I said, he just formatted the HD on accident so...what does that tell you? So phone support is too complicated...I have no experience with WinME, so i dont know where they are or what they are doing, and they are horrible at describing it, so Im kind of stuck until I get down there.

Thanks for the link though, that looks like what Im looking for.

[glc]

It's too late now - reinstalling the OS has overwritten a ton of stuff which you will never get back.

[avx]

aww...that sucks...o well

[Force Flow]

I ment that by not writing anything to the drive (ie - installing the O/S) there may have been a chance to recover the data.

Now that it has been done, like glc said, it's too late.

[jokerman]

i have actually recovered files after a format using this free program It worked evn after adding files to it after the format. It was a slave drive used for storage

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

[Force Flow]

It's too late, jokerman. They reinstalled the O/S.

[jokerman]

Unless he did a zerro fill on that drive the data that wasn't over written by the os might still be there. I've gone 6 mounths after a format adding programs to my drive and still have success with this program. Fact i just did a search for lost data and it came back with a long list of files and folders wiped by the last format ,granted some were stated as in poor condition.If the data was important, then it's at least worth a try.